Thursday, March 12, 2009

March 11, 2009 Paper Luna Collapses








Stellar Nursery Jr. astronomers present: Ian, Justin, Rodney and newcomer Devin. In spite of the wonderful aroma of approximately 450 pound of Corned Beef cooking in the kitchen of the Valley CC in preparation for the Valley's 16th Annual "Old Neighborhood" St. Patrick's Day Parade on Saturday, March 14th in the 1st Ward of Buffalo we did however find the intestinal fortitude to continue to work on our paper mache moon globes for the first hour. Unfortunately 1 or 2 moon globes experienced some rather significant plate tectonics due to the weight of a layer of fresh paper mache pulp. They may resemble asteroids instead.
The second hour we resumed our discussion of our exoplanet mission and continued to disassemble more parts for our spacecraft from our electronic device "graveyard". It looks like we'll be ready next week to begin some construction. To date I believe there are to be infrared, X-ray, visible light imaging devices, lasers, power supplies(ion emitters?), communication devices, etc... Miss Malena did again try to help me with my "astronomy in Spanish" lesson.

This Italian may just forgo the Spanish lesson and may just be Irish for a day or 2 this weekend-- Éirinn go brách!

Sunday, March 8, 2009

March 4, 2009 Finally a Clear Night at the Valley
























It was our first time out at the Valley with the telescopes in months. The night sky was wonderfully clear and crisp around 22 degrees out. I think Ian, Justin and lasted about 20 minutes. We did get to see a beautiful crescent Venus, M42 in Orion, and the favorite was the moon which beautifully highlighted the craters of our paper moon project-Ptolemaeus, Alphonsus, and Arzachel which appeared on the the LPOD on January 26, 2009. Montes Apenninus were equally as striking in our telescopes. The skies were a bit too illuminated for us to locate Comet Lulin however. Hopefully we'll get out again next Wednesday.